


somebody’s driving and he will be drinking

by ak1h1k0s



Series: Angstober 2019 [1]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angstober: Day 2, Jewish Richie Tozier, M/M, Not beta read we die like lesbians, Period-Typical Homophobia, Suicidal Thoughts, college au if that matters, suicidal idealation, weed but only mentioned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-07
Updated: 2019-10-07
Packaged: 2020-11-26 14:14:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20931560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ak1h1k0s/pseuds/ak1h1k0s
Summary: He doesn’t remember much; spotlights, sweat, college party songs and words in a tongue he should understand but doesn’t because his parents never took him to Hebrew school. His phone is jacked, cracked much like his glasses. His lips are bruised and there’s an odd taste of copper in his mouth. A girl must have ravished him, he thinks (which makes him sick to his stomach).





	somebody’s driving and he will be drinking

**Author's Note:**

> For angstober Day 2: "You said you loved me"
> 
> Title is taken from Townie - Mitski

_“Somebody’s driving and he will be drinking.  
And no one’s going back.”_

There are no good songs about turning 21 so Richie Tozier makes up his own the night after Yom Kippur ends with tons of alcohol dripping down his throat. It’s the seedling of a habit that will haunt him like his cigarettes, a habit that will kill him - which is the plan.  
He doesn’t remember much; spotlights, sweat, college party songs and words in a tongue he should understand but doesn’t because his parents never took him to Hebrew school. His phone is jacked, cracked much like his glasses. His lips are bruised and there’s an odd taste of copper in his mouth. A girl must have ravished him, he thinks (which makes him sick to his stomach). 

His dorm is trashed. Stan had decided to spring a surprise trip up to the synagogue in Bangor onto him. (“I thought you didn’t want to speak to your dad” “I don’t” and Richie left it at that.) He suspects it has something to do with the girl he’s been seeing, which nowadays is mostly the case - the dude is fucking whipped- and he needs his mom’s approval or some shit.  
In any case, Stan is and always was assigned Richie Tozier babysitter - which is why their shared dorm looks like a twister went through it.

Feeling around vaguely for his glasses, his hand knocks against a cold glass of _something._ He breathes out a ‘shit’ which comes out louder than he meant it too and when the air blows out of his mouth with the word. Maybe there’s an irony in that. _‘Redemption’_ he thinks. Is that not what Yom Kippur is about?

Someone is in his dorm Richie realizes a bit too late as he struggles to process the shadow that overcomes his doorway. He stiffens, not because he fears death (he’s looked down at it so many times) but because his head hurts like a bitch. Like Zeus birthing Athena (he learned about that in a literature course he took, he’s been obsessed with mythos since. Sappho, too, but he’d never admit such a thing allowed.)

“Christ, Tozier.” The voice is pitched and fast. Stan said he saw an angel in the river in Derry once, maybe that’s what it sounded like. “You’re still fucking trashed.” 

“Eds.” Richie greets, a smile forming on his face that splits his chapped lips. “To what do I owe the pleasure?” 

He hadn’t seen Eddie move, which he blames on his lack of glasses. That’s something Richie seems to be getting better at, blame. He blames everything on the weed in his bong or the alcohol in the bottle or his cracked and chipped glasses and on his hands that haven’t stopped shaking since he cut them on a fishing hook in 1989.  
Richie hears Eddie tuttering around and muttering to himself as he cleans up the spilled water on Richie’s bedside. A few _‘tsks’_ escape his mouth so he thinks about hitting him over the head with the fluffed up pillow. But getting up is a hassle he decides against. 

“You were so fucking trashed, Tozier. I couldn’t leave you here alone like that.” Eddie reiterates, rising back to his full height to look down at the other man. Richie gulps a bit - feeling like he’s being dissected, cut with a scalpel. Like he saw Stan do to some organ in the criminology lab one time. He saw it on T.V once, too, men like him - well, no, he _wasn’t_ like them. He wasn’t a fucking homo, he wasn’t-

“Richie?” Eddie’s voice is strangely soft. When he blesses Richie with his glasses, his hands linger a bit too long. Then Richie puts the cracked glasses on his face and Eddie looks at him with so much open fondness it makes him sick with want. Maybe he is like those men on T.V, maybe they’ve plagued him threw the screen - _they’re_ the ones who make him want, want, want. They made him sick - like the sickness Sonia always bitched about. It coats his lungs like the tar that already does, suffocating him like he wished the tar would. And maybe on Yom Kippur he should’ve died because that’s the only way he could ever be redeemed. 

He sits up with the intensity of a goth highschooler’s switchblade, startling Eddie. Moving backward, he crosses his arms against his chest and sniffs. “That’s my name. Richard Thomas Tozier.” 

“You forgot Dick.” 

“Hey-”

“You told me you loved me,” Eddie says with no hint of hesitation, no clue about the timid animal he has to deal with, no clue the words burned his tongue so much he almost bit it off.

Richie stiffens and suddenly everything is too much at once. He can feel the dying sunburn on his cheeks and shoulders become a flame again and the sweat that sticks to his scalp that makes him want to dig his nails into it and tear it out. He stands, shoving Eddie out of the way and making his way to the bathroom. 

He throws up, or forces himself to, he can’t remember because it wouldn’t be the first fucking time. He’s 21 and 10 years old all at once, he can’t remember and doesn’t care to. Richie blames the alcohol, blames his weed. Blames the fact he’s replayed his death so many times in his head. Blames Stan in the criminology lab and the men on T.V who call themselves queens and march in the riots - their noses dripping with blood as they’re smashed in and still holding a smile.  
(drunk Richie saw them on Fitz from philosophy’s TV during Purim and whispered _‘that’s where God is’_ and took a swig of 4-year-old wine) All Richie knows how to do is to blame so that’s what he does.

Eddie is there behind him because of course he is. They’ve been tied at the hip since they were 8 and it’s so relaxing yet infuriating. He rubs circles into Richie’s back, which he could swear leaves sunburns and blisters, and holds his curls back. 

“I’m sick,” Richie says, sputtering into the toilet bowl._ ‘I could drown here, if I tried’_ he thinks. 

“You had a lot to drink.” He soothes. Richie wants to punch Eddie for being so naive. 

“No, Eds. Not like that - it’s the fucking queer shit.” He hears the other’s breathing hitch like it does when he’s about to go hyperactive-lecture-mode, so he babbles on. “It’s sick, Eds and there’s no cure and I’m going to die. Either some fucking sickness is gonna eat me whole or there’s going to be a bullet in my head. I’m sick and it’s contagious so-”

“Richie,” Eddie demands, gently coaxing his head away from the toilet with his hands that only irritate Richie’s sunburnt face. “Richie, look at me. Christ - just look at me.”

He does, only because he’s never been able to say no to Eddie a day in his godforsaken life. He regrets it because the look he’s giving him is full of pity and grief, his two least favorite things. If he were another man, if this was a different world, he’d kiss the wrinkles off his face, the bags under his puppy dog eyes and his puckering bottom lip. But he doesn’t. It’s the way things are, he supposes.

“Stop saying that shit - don’t say anything, just_ listen_ okay? Christ. You’re not sick, I know you think that and I know it’s rich coming from the fucking hypochondriac but you’re _not._ It’s - I don’t know what it is but you’re not sick or delusional or whatever you’ve been fucking telling yourself.” 

Richie’s hands grip the toilet bowl so tight his knuckles turn white. He wants to scream, to grab the scissors by the sink and cut the storm out of him. He remembers driving 100 mph in his beat-up Cadillac when he realized he loved Eddie for the first time to feel any semblance of death or what it felt like to fly or whatever the fuck else, anything but the blistering feeling inside. 

He’d say the words again, now, if he were a different man. If this was a different world and men could love men without being headlines on the news and Richie Tozier didn’t have to drink himself into madness to make up songs about being 21. But is such a world, so he doesn’t say the words. Not yet - they burn him too much and he’s been burned so many times and there’s not enough aloe cream in the world that Andrea Uris could place on his face to fix it. 

“Richie Tozier if you don’t answer me right fucking now we’re going to the fucking hospital-” 

“Okay.” Richie stutters out. His hands shake against the ceramic - there are a thousand words in his head going as fast as he did that one night but “okay” are the only ones that won’t make him cut his tongue off. 

“Okay?” Eddie sniffs, clearly displeased with the response - but he wouldn’t dare press. 

“Yeah.” 

“Alright.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading!! Here's where else you can find me  
https://sapphoites.carrd.co/
> 
> (if the link doesn't work, im DykeToziers on twitter!)


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